How Did Prophet Muhammad (saw) Deal With Children?

Babies under the age of one are cuddly, chubby and adorable; bundles of joy that everyone loves to hold, kiss, hug, coo over and carry around.

That is, until they do something smelly and leaky in their diaper….. psssssssST

As soon as that happens, the hitherto adoring adult (especially a male one) who is holding them, immediately scrunches up their nose in disgust and hands them over to the mother or nanny for cleanup.

However, this was not what the Prophet did in such a situation. He would often take infants in his lap, even though in that era there were no leak-proof diapers!

Narrated Aisha (ra):

“A boy was brought to the Prophet to do tahnik for him, but the boy urinated on him, whereupon the Prophet had water poured on the place of urine.” (Al-Bukhari)

Prophet Muhammad refrained from expressing disgust or immediately denying a newborn baby his lap even when the baby urinated on his clothes! This indicates his exemplarily high level of tolerance for babies’ natural phases, as it is normal for newborns to urinate often.

It is well known that the Prophet not just allowed children in this age-range inside hismasjid during obligatory congregational prayers, but also patiently tolerated their antics during prayers, even if these antics caused noise or disturbance.

Reported by Abdullah ibn Shaddad from his father:

“The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) came out to lead us in either maghrib or ‘isha’ one night, and he was carrying Hassan or Husain. The Messenger of Allah came forward and put (the child) down, then he saidtakbir and started to pray. During the prayer, he prostrated and made his prostration long.

My father said: “I raised my head and I saw the child on the back of the Messenger of Allah whilst he was prostrating, so I returned to my prostration.”

When the Messenger of Allah finished praying, the people said:

“O Messenger of Allah, during your prayer you prostrated for so long that we thought something had happened or that you were receiving Revelation.”

He said: Nothing at all happened, but my son was riding on my back and I did not want to disturb him until he had had enough. (An-Nisa’i)